AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK HOLE GENERATOR — “MOLOCH”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 062016
 

black-hole-generator-video

 

Ten years after Black Hole Generator released the debut EP Black Karma, they have returned with a debut album. Bearing the title A Requiem For Terra, it has now been released by Dark Essence Records, and today we are delighted to share with you the premiere of a fascinating video for the album’s third track, “Moloch“.

The song has a cold, midnight-dark, hallucinatory quality as well as an occult atmosphere of building tension and threatening peril that spills over into fusillades of violence. The video created by Romanian artist and musician Costin Chioreanu (a name that will be well known to our readers) makes a perfect match for this gripping but unnerving song, and is also an unsettling but thoroughly engrossing panorama of bleak visions all by itself. Continue reading »

SEEN AND NOT COMPLETELY HEARD: WOLFHEART, URSINNE, GLOSON, PALE DIVINE, BLACK THERAPY, THRON, HORROR GOD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 052016
 

wolfheart-boneyard

 

Happy Monday. Through the miracles of modern technology, I’m writing this at roughly 38,000 feet above the earth, somewhere across the deserts of northern Utah, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and the barren panhandle of Texas. Under duress from my fucking day job, I’m bound for Houston for the next couple of days.

Actually, it’s not exactly a miracle, not something like turning water into wine, more like turning water into weak tea — because although I can get online, the service isn’t good enough to stream music or videos. So some of the items I’m including in this round-up are things I can see but can’t hear.

WOLFHEART

I’m beginning with an item that I could have heard over the weekend if I had known it was out there. Unfortunately, I discovered it only today after boarding this jet I’m on. It’s a video for a new song by Finland’s Wolfheart named “Boneyard“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: A DREAM OF POE — “A WALTZ FOR APOPHENIA”

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Dec 052016
 

A DREAM OF POE - A Waltz For Apophenia

 

With the new album A Waltz for Apophenia, A Dream of Poe concludes a conceptual trilogy that began with The Mirror of Deliverance (2011) and continued with An Infinity Emerged (2015). The new album is being released today by Solitude Productions, and to help spread the word we bring you the premiere of all 8 new songs.

On the new album, composer and instrumentalist Miguel Santos (a native of The Azores islands but now living in Edinburgh, Scotland) is again joined by lyricist Paulo Pacheco and clean vocalist Kaivan Saraei, with both Santos and João Melo voicing the harsh growls. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: UNCANNY, GOHRGONE, BONE STORM, UNDEAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Dec 042016
 

uncanny-liturgy

 

For those of you who were expecting a “THAT’S METAL!” post today (because I did say I would put one together on the first Sunday of each month), I have to disappoint you. I didn’t have time to compile a Shades of Black post either. I shouldn’t even be writing this post. My fucking day job, which usually leaves me alone on the weekends, has come close to taking over this one.

Although I should be working this very minute, I couldn’t resist the urge to quickly share some death metal with you before I go back to the project that has rudely descended on me like an anvil.

UNCANNY

The first item is a three-track EP named Liturgy released on November 18 by Sweden’s Uncanny. Since the band’s last EP four years ago, there have been some line-up departures. For this new one, original members Fredrik Norrman (Katatonia, October Tide) and Kennet Englund (Dellamorte, Interment, Centinex) are joined by new vocalist Mikael Hanni (Disrupted). The EP also includes guest solos on two tracks by Jonas Kjellgren (ex-Carnal Forge, Scar Symmetry, Centinex). Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (MORDICUS)

 THE REARVIEW MIRROR  2 Responses »
Dec 042016
 

Rearview Mirror

 

I’ve already forgotten how I came across Mordicus. It was only a month or so ago, but my memory is porous and things leak out. But I didn’t forget the music. The first song I heard (“A Thorn In Holy Flesh”) wasn’t what I was expecting. It struck me as something very different from much of the death metal from that era that I’ve discovered over the last decade. As I listened to the rest of the album which includes that song, the initial impression was reinforced. And the album is really good.

Mordicus came together in Joensuu, Finland, in 1990. The members were in other bands at the time and were interested in death metal, which was still a new thing. In 1991 they recorded a couple of demos, and then the following year a U.S. label named Skindrill Records released a 7″ Morticus EP named Three Way Dissection. In 1993, after sending promos to different labels, they reached a deal with Thrash Records and recorded their debut album, Dances From Left, which also turned out to be their last album. It was released in 1993. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: STEREOGUM’S LIST OF THE BEST 50 ALBUMS OF 2016

 LISTMANIA 2016  17 Responses »
Dec 032016
 

stereogum-50-best-albums-2016

 

As you probably know, part of our year-end LISTMANIA series involves re-posting year-end lists of the best metal releases as selected by what I call “big platform” web sites and print zines, i.e., publications that reach numbers of readers vastly in excess of those reached by sites like ours that are more exclusively focused on metal, and in our case the more extreme variants of the genre.

In recent days Stereogum posted its list of “The Best 50 Albums of 2016“. This isn’t a “metal only” list. It’s an impossible comparison of apples to oranges, identifying and ranking albums across a wide range of musical genres. I suppose in that respect it’s like the musical equivalent of the Westminster Dog Show. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: THE POPMATTERS LIST OF THE BEST METAL OF 2016

 LISTMANIA 2016  44 Responses »
Dec 032016
 

metallica-hardwired

 

As part of our annual NCS LISTMANIA extravaganza we re-publish lists of the year’s best metal that appear on web sites that appeal to vastly larger numbers of readers than we do — not because those readers or the writers have better taste in metal than our community does, but more from a morbid curiosity about what the great unwashed masses are being told is best for them. It’s like opening a window that affords an insight into the way the rest of the world outside our own disease-ridden nooks and crannies perceives the music that is our daily sustenance.

One of those sites is PopMatters. It has been in existence since 1999. In its own words the site “is an international magazine of cultural criticism and analysis” with a scope that “is broadly cast on all things pop culture”, including “music, television, films, books, video games, sports, theatre, the visual arts, travel, and the Internet”. PopMatters boasts an audience of “over 1.4 million unique monthly readers”. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: THY SEPULCHRAL MOON — “INCANTATIONS INCITING DEMISE”

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Dec 022016
 

sepulchral-moon-incantations-inciting-demise

 

Today is the release date for Incantations Inciting Demise, the debut EP by an anonymous black metal collaborative who have adopted the name Thy Sepulchral Moon. Encompassing five aural “spells”, it’s being released by Signal Rex on black cassette, limited to 66 hand-numbered copies. We give you the opportunity to become ensorceled by them through our premiere of a complete stream of the EP.

I should warn you that these aren’t the kind of spells you might first imagine. They aren’t hypnotic or entrancing in any conventional sense. But for those interested in entering an adrenaline-charged fugue state brought on by unrelenting chaos and bestial violence, they do have their charms. Continue reading »

DISCHORDIA: “THANATOPSIS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 022016
 

dischordia-thanatopsis

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Dischordia from Oklahoma City.)

As I’m currently sifting through all the various releases from this year’s crop, in preparation for my annual list-stravaganza, I’ve been able to pick out a few trends and patterns which have developed over the last twelve months.

One in particular has stood out – just how much good Death Metal, both from established names and underground upstarts, that’s been released in 2016.

And that includes Thanatopsis, the second album by Oklahoma triumvirate Dischordia. Continue reading »

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